A/HRC/43/43/Add.2 amount to about two thirds of the population of informal settlements), traveller communities, and migrants and refugees. 40. According to Government data, 16,090 persons live in 497 informal settlements. One third of those settlements are in the Greater Paris area. More than one quarter of the residents are children. 28 The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) documented that conditions at such sites ranged from rough and unsafe to humble but decent living quarters. The worst conditions observed included rat infestations, extreme levels of poor sanitation and environmental degradation, and other serious health hazards. Sites visited were usually excluded from services such as water, sanitation, electricity and solid waste removal.29 41. The Special Rapporteur was struck by the appalling conditions that she observed in an informal settlement in Marseilles, where she visited a Roma settlement of 120 people in which no water or sanitary services were provided by the Government. The community siphoned water from a fire hydrant and had no toilets or showers on site, though health-care services were available and children attended the local school. 42. In Toulouse, the Special Rapporteur visited a former office building occupied by more than 300 migrants and refugees, including women and single-parent families. Though the complex had running water and electricity, there were persistent sewage problems due to insufficient sanitation facilities. The building had no showers or cooking facilities and was severely overcrowded, with up to 15 people sharing former office rooms and others in corridors. Mattresses and furniture had been salvaged from garbage dumps and there was a bedbug infestation. The city had not intervened to improve the conditions or to ensure security of tenure for the residents. Since the visit, this residence has been shut down, and the Special Rapporteur has been told that most of the residents moved to another building with worse conditions, housing approximately 700 people. 43. In both cases, the residents were under threat of eviction and alternative accommodation had not been proposed by the State. While the Special Rapporteur did receive reports of successful examples of long-term housing solutions having been developed in close collaboration with residents of informal settlements, such as those in Strasbourg, the residents that she interviewed indicated that they had not been meaningfully consulted. 30 The Special Rapporteur reminds the Government that participation is a human right and that residents of informal settlements must be given the opportunity to meaningfully participate in decisionmaking that affects their housing. 44. When alternative sites are offered to Roma, municipalities often fail to ensure social integration, forcing them to live in enclosed or desolate former industrial areas. Some are under video or guard surveillance.31 45. The Government’s programme of “reabsorption” to reduce informal settlements stresses the need to provide access to water, sanitation, adequate housing, education and work. The Special Rapporteur’s visit, however, revealed a different story. Policies denying access to core elements of the right to adequate housing, including the right to water and sanitation, to health and to live in security, are in violation of international human rights law. The Special Rapporteur reminds the Government that it is obliged under international human rights law to ensure human dignity. G. Forced evictions 46. Forced evictions are a prima facie violation of the right to adequate housing. 32 Such evictions in France have been the subject of several reports and recommendations by the 28 29 30 31 32 Interministerial Task Force on Accommodation and Access to Housing, Etat des lieux des bidonvilles en France métropolitaine au 1er Juillet 2018 (Paris, 2018), p. 3. OHCHR, “No one left behind: mission report on the right to housing and related human rights of Roma in France”, June 2018, p. 8. Ibid., p. ii. Ibid., p. 9. See Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, general comment No. 7 (1997) on forced evictions. 9